Former Founders Fund VC Sam Blond has launched an AI sales startup to modernize Salesforce

When Sam Blonde left his job as a venture capitalist at Founders Fund a year ago — just 18 months after starting — He told the world That being a venture capitalist wasn’t for him and he was “going back to work.”

On Wednesday, he officially announced his new startup, Monacofrom sneaking. It was co-founded with his brother Brian Blonde, also a former sales professional turned venture capitalist. (Brian is a partner at Human Capital and was previously at Sutter Hill.) The brothers are joined by two other co-founders, Abhishek Viswanathan (formerly CPO at Apollo and Qualtrics), and Malai Desai (formerly SVP of Engineering at Clari).

Monaco has raised a total of $35 million, between $10 million in seed funding and a $25 million seed round, Sam Blonde told TechCrunch. Both rounds were led by Founders Fund, with participation from Human Capital. The startup has been quietly testing its AI sales platform through a private beta for a while, but on Wednesday it opened for public beta.

The well-connected blond brothers (Sam was previously head of sales at Brix), have attracted a group of big-name angels as backers: Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison, Y Combinator chief Garry Tan, and Greenoaks Capital founder Neil Mehta.

So what attracted this esteemed list of investors? Monaco enters the crowded field of AI sales technology with a new twist. Not only does it compete with SaaS-era technology via its native alternative to AI; It also equips experienced human salespeople to be experts in the AI ​​loop, monitoring and directing the work of AI.

The startup targets early stage and Series A startups with a product suite that includes an AI-based customer relationship management (CRM) system and a built-from-scratch ZoomInfo-like database for finding leads. AI agents can create and execute email outreach campaigns and craft follow-up emails, all monitored by human experts. It includes other features as well, such as taking meeting notes.

The product aims to automate a lot of sales work. “We can replace the entire workflow with agents,” says Blond (pictured above, third from left, with brother Brian, pictured second from left). For example, Monaco builds a database of potential customers, identifies the exact people in the target company to showcase, and the sequence in which they will be targeted. “We coordinate and implement this sequence,” says Blond. “We schedule a meeting.”

Specialized salespeople help ensure that the AI ​​is not hallucinating and is trained to sell the product, and the actual customer meetings are conducted by people. No avatars.

This makes Monaco a rare startup in AI sales, which it is not Talk about it Human replacement. Instead, it makes experienced salespeople available to startups that they can’t hire directly.

“It’s this combination of technology, but also service,” Blond says. “Monaco does not have an agent pretending to be a salesperson trying to sell to the customer.”

Right now, Monaco’s main competition is HubSpot, as its price will be more affordable for startups than the market’s big kahuna, Salesforce. Blond declined to tell us what Monaco will charge, except to say it’s a fixed, reduced fee currently while the product remains in beta.

He’s also well aware that he’s in an exceptionally crowded market. Y Combinator alone has graduated hundreds of sales startups in the past two years, ranging from AI CRMs to specialized AI tools. Then there are startups like Attio, Clay, and transformation, And the crop of so-called AI SDR (Sales Development Rep) tools – startups that work to replace human e.g 11x, verbatimand 1mind.

Furthermore, established companies, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and ZoomInfo, all offer their own AI tools and utilities.

Blonde points out that today’s best players were built in another era, and none of the emerging players are performing well enough to be clear winners.

“There’s certainly no ‘sales indicator,'” he says, referring to the popular AI coding tool. “But there will be.”

He clearly wants Monaco to be the winner. “In the broad category of sales technology, there’s a market leader right now,” Blond says. “The market leader is Salesforce.” “We are in the early stages of the next platform transformation that will create a new market leader.”

However, of all the industries he could have entered after leaving Founders Fund, why beat it out amid so much competition?

Speaking seriously, Blond says that, having spent his entire career in sales, “as a non-technical founder, there’s really only one type of tech company I’m qualified to be a founder of: a sales tech company.”

He clearly enjoys doing it. The company employs about 40 people and an office filled with fellow career salespeople, sporting World War II-style motivational posters on the wall with slogans like “Save Startups” and “Build the Future with Monaco.” There’s even an office bell that rings every time the AI ​​has a meeting with a potential client.